VICTORIA, Texas (AP)--Horace
Lee Logan, who started the country music program ``Louisiana Hayride'' and first
said what became the catch-phrase ``Elvis has left the building,'' died Sunday.
He was 86.

Logan had pancreatitis and acute respiratory distress syndrome,
said his wife, Linda.

Logan began in radio when he was 16, after winning a
contest to become an announcer on KWKH-AM in Shreveport, La., Mrs. Logan said.

He began producing the Hayride, a country music show performed before a live
KWKH audience in Shreveport's Municipal Auditorium, in 1948. It survived only
two years after Logan's departure in 1958.

In between, he introduced a number
of country music's top names to the nation. Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash and Hank
Williams were among people who got their first big break on the Hayride.

``When
he gave you an introduction, you thought the president of the United States was
coming on,'' Merle Kilgore, a friend of Logan's and manager for Hank Williams
Jr., said Sunday from his home in Paris, Tenn. ``He was the greatest. Being on
the Hayride ... that was a big as it got in the country music industry.''

When
Presley debuted in 1954, Logan wrote in his 1998 memoir, ``Elvis, Hank and Me,''
he wanted to say something reassuring to the nervous young man, but didn't have
time. Instead, he grabbed the microphone.

``Ladies and gentlemen, you've never
heard of this young man before, but one day you'll be able to tell your children
and grandchildren you heard musical history made tonight,'' he told the audience.

Two years later, tring to quiet a frenzied Hayride audience after another Presley
performance, Logan announced, ``Elvis has left the building.''

``With his voice
of authority,'' said Kilgore, who was in attendance that night, ``all of those
kids shut up and believed him. Of course, Elvis really had left the building.''

The Logans had lived in Seadrift, Texas, on the San Antonio Bay, since 1995.